Angolan Virus Spreads
The death toll from a deadly virus that emerged in Angola last
October soared to 210 with health officials saying there is no end
in sight to the outbreak.
Angolan Virus Spreads
The death toll from a deadly virus that emerged in Angola last October soared to 210 with health officials saying there is no end in sight to the outbreak. Marburg haemorrhagic fever is a rare but extremely lethal disease caused by a virus in the same family as Ebola. A team of international medical specialists has been working in the northern city of Uige, the epicentre of the epidemic, to bring the disease under control. They say their efforts have been met with resistance and denial by many in Uige, who are avoiding hospitals and the specially suited medical teams that roam the city in search of new cases. “The difference between this outbreak of Marburg and previous outbreaks, including Ebola, is that this one is in an urban, confined area,” said Tom Ksiazek, who heads the Atlanta-based Centres for Disease Control’s special pathogens branch.
Earthquakes
Several homes in western Guatemala collapsed, trapping some inhabitants inside, when a magnitude 5.3 tremor struck Totonicapan province.
n Thousands of residents in the West Sumatra capital of Padang fled to the higher ground following a 7.4-magnitude earthquake that rocked the city. No significant damage was reported, but the shaking was felt as far away as Singapore.
n Earth movements were also felt in metropolitan Tokyo, southern Japan’s Kyushu Island, Taiwan, the northwest Sumatra aftershock zone, the southern Philippines, areas around New Zealand’s Cook Strait, the Tibet-Nepal border region, suburban Tehran and California’s San Diego County.
Volcanic Surge
Geologic forces beneath Sumatra have expanded beyond the recent devastating earthquakes to stir many volcanoes across Indonesia. More than 20,000 people fled the slopes of Mount Talang as the volcano spewed hot ash in the wake strong tremors along the same fault that has produced the deadly Sumatran quakes. A day later, seismologists issued a volcano alert for newly rumbling Tangkuban Perahu, near the city of Bandung on Java. The alert level around the famed Anak Krakatau (Krakatoa), in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, was raised to 2 on a scale from 1 to 4. Several others have also begun erupting.
Butterfly Spectacular
Millions of painted lady butterflies that fluttered into California’s Central Valley in late March could be just the advance guard of one of the largest migrations of the species on record, according to Prof. Arthur Shapiro, a butterfly expert at the University of California at Davis. Shapiro said he is getting reports of “billions” of other butterflies in Southern California, which appear to be heading north. Heavy winter rainfall appears to be responsible for the winged population boom.
Whaling Expansion
Japanese government sources said the country intends to expand the scope of its “research” whaling in the Antarctic Ocean to include humpback and fin whales late this year. The Kyodo news agency reported the unnamed sources also said Japan will nearly double its catch of minke whales. Japan halted commercial whaling in line with a 1986 International Whaling Commission moratorium, but has been hunting whales since 1987 for what it calls scientific research purposes. Critics contend that whale meat said to be obtained for research is actually sold for consumption in Japan.
Chernobyl Cleansing
Almost 20 years after the explosion at Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant, radiation levels in neighboring Belarus are falling faster than expected, according to a study published by the Belarus Institute of Radiology. More than 23 percent of the country was contaminated with radioactive isotopes, especially Caesium-137, when Chernobyl exploded in April 1986. Now only 19 percent is affected by significant Caesium-137 pollution, mainly due to natural phenomena like sunlight and rain, the survey reported.
Sahara Survivors
A group of crocodiles living in a remote pond in the Sahara Desert may be the last members of a once-abundant population to survive since the region’s climate became arid about 9,000 years ago. Scientists from Madrid’s Complutense University are studying the few dozen Nile crocodiles that live in a small Mauritania pond near the Senegalese border. The pond is only about 100 square metres in size and is 200 km from the nearest river. The Spanish scientists found the pond contains large amounts of micro-organisms, which favor the growth of plants and the fish the crocodiles feed on. They say the delicate ecosystem had remained stable despite its small size for millennia, and describe it as a “unique ecological phenomenon.”
– Steve Newman
